Premiere: Anya Anastasia makes enthralling music video debut with fierce, rousing first single ‘Losing Wild’

Adelaide singer-songwriter, Anya Anastasia, first revealed her wonderful fusion of experimental folk and West-African inspired desert-rock on the 28th January, in the form of fierce debut single Losing Wild. And now, Backseat Mafia are excited to exclusively reveal the stunning visuals of the accompanying music video.

Anya takes a conscious, storied approach to her songwriting, using unique lyricism to question society and help stir environmental action. Distinctive, momentous and invigorating, Losing Wild opens with a portentous, steady pluck of banjo strings combined with stomping drums. Anya’s bewitching vocals hold steady throughout, waved along by quaintly folk instrumentals and ethereal harmonies. The delicate landscape and layering of the song’s arrangement is, itself, perfectly complemented by the video.

Filmed, directed and edited by Aaron Austin-Glen, the wonderfully surreal clip is set in the picturesque plains of Lake George in NSW, and sees Anastasia with her feet firmly in the muddy earth. Taking years of experience in theatre and contemporary performances, Anastasia choreographed the piece with help from contemporary dance pioneer Elizabeth Cameron Dalman.

Moving with ferocity and channelling her wildest self, Anya moves freely and with intent across the plains and into the rippled, shallow water. Drone footage filmed from above gives an artistic perspective of her movements, as they take a whole new shape in the form of her silhouette on the earth’s canvas. Between the wide-spanning shots of the ominous landscape and Anastasia’s captivating performance, the music video innately feeds into the song’s earthy musical arrangements, as well as conveying its message; questioning the destructive path that society is on – laying waste to the natural world and our fundamental creativity.

‘The mind is a mirror to the land. What was once forest now is sand, in the twilight of wilder days’ -(Losing Wild)

Anya’s unique fusion of experimental folk and desert rock has seen her take an avant-garde approach to music making, intricately moulding flourishing arrangements with unique instrumental accompaniments and bewitching vocals. Profoundly evocative, she brings to mind faraway lands, untouched plains and the many wonders of the natural world.

“‘Losing Wild’ explores the idea that the loss of biodiversity diminishes human imagination. The song suggests that the extinction crisis not only poses heartbreaking and planet-threatening external risks, but also heralds the end of good poetry and diminishment of playful minds. To find solutions, we all need to listen to our scientists whilst also engaging our imaginations.” -Anya Anastasia

‘Losing Wild’ was released January 28. The talented Anya is now steadily working her way towards an EP release before the middle of the year, and we’re excited for it. Expect to hear more in the coming months!